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Hollander: Gautrekssaga and Hrólfssaga. 18Î
to be Jökull in the Vatsdælasaga, and þórir in the £or-
steinssaga Ylkingssonar.
To be sure, we have no direct evidence of O.N. kregft
having had this value, beside that of ’weakling’. At any
rate, later Icelandic copyists understood the word in the
latter sense; for in MSS. A and C — of the enlarged class
— Hrosskell urges his king to defiance against Ketil ”er
vér vitum mest vesaldarkregâ” l). — Assuming, though, that
the original author of the Hrólfssaga knew and intended the
earlier meaning of kregô = ’hotspur etc.’, we can perfectly
well understand how this epithet, in its turn, suggested the
circumstances of the succession. A Ketill Hotspur was not
to be thought of as a worthy successor to Gautrek — still
less, for that matter, a Ketill Weakling — especially when
having as brother such a paragon of long-headedness as
Hrólf. Hence the obvious recourse, from above hint in the
Gautrekssaga, of transferring the succession to the younger
brother, straight counter to the law of the land ”at inn ellri
konungsson taki riki eptir fodur sinn”.
If we do not accept this explanation we are confronted
with the difficulty of having to account for the discrepancy
above indicated between Ketils character and epithet.
Finally, the testimony of style seems to point to the
Gautrekssaga being the earlier production; for notwithstan-
ding the legendary nature of the subject, — apart, of course,
from manifestly later elaborations — it is of a distinctly
more realistic quality. In fact, the whole mode of attack,
if I may say so, is more nearly akin to the style of the
best times 2), than that of the Hrólfssaga — where a first
step has been taken on the road that was to lead to the
thoroughly romantic treatment of even Northern material.
In the Gautrekssaga, the note of ’curteisie’ is as yet alto-
’) chap. xxT.
*) Cf. Boor, 1. c. p. 381.
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